The Euro: The Biggest Lies Exposed

Honestly, I am still meeting way too many people who demote Bitcoin because in their mind, Bitcoin is not useful for anything. It is just a toy. Or just a gamble, they say. If one wants to argue with me, then please bring up more valid arguments than just your lack of knowledge! To prove these people wrong, I expose the most common lies I face when people argue that Bitcoin is useless.

“I Cannot Pay With Bitcoin”

The argument that you cannot use Bitcoin (anywhere) is… just wrong! There are world wide more than a 100.000 merchants and vendors accepting Bitcoin. If you want to find the point of sale next to your location visit a site like coinmap.org. This is a simple fact. Everyone who comes up and tells me that you cannot use Bitcoin has not even read a single article about it.

And the locations accepting Bitcoin are not just nerd stores selling nerd stuff. The list comprises of from small coffee places and local stores up to big companies for delivery services (Lieferando.de), hotels and holiday booking vendors (Expedia) as well as big stores like Microsoft and Starbucks. So, Bitcoin is not accepted, huh?

“My Debit and Credit Card Payments Are For Free”

This is a classic one. “But with debit or credit card I do not have to pay fees”. Seriously? It’s common knowledge, that every card payment has at least three fees involved: that of the merchant, the point of sales provider and the final card provider. If it was for free, then why would some stores deny card payments below 10€? The current system with debit and credit card is simply so wide spread and it’s already established that for every payment, these fees are already included in the pricing.

Apart from the fact that the fee for Visa or Mastercard is an non transparent mess of dozens of factors (type of merchant, location, currency, …), it is still in the range of 1% to 3%. At the moment, I pay for a Bitcoin transaction confirmed within 10 minutes just about 0.3%. And if I spare an hour, it would drop down to only 0.1%. And this includes ALL cost for the whole transaction (sending, receiving, transferring)!

“I Have Euro And Can Pay With That”

“But, why should I use Bitcoin, if I have my Euro and can pay with them”. Honestly, I do not even know where to start here. Let’s keep it simple: The system is making you believe that you have them and you can pay with them. My wife is Greek and she wanted to withdraw some money during our holidays. The actual reason was, that we paid 20€ on a 200€ transaction to Germany. Single European Payment Area… yeah, alright. So, we thought the withdrawal is probably cheaper option. It actually is! Yet, at this very moment, the Greeks are still only allowed to withdrawal 810€ every 14 days. Why? Capital Controls! Fantastic!

Let’s summarize: My wife has her hard earned money in Greece and we want to use it now. She has two options: Either pay an amount of ridiculous high, nontransparent fees for transactions or fly every now and then there, to be able to withdraw 810€. Are you kidding me?

The more I think about it, the more likely it will be that one day I will also have a withdrawal limit.

“The Euro is Reliable”

Having talked about the restrictions for withdrawals: Do you know about the surveillance and inspections done on your bank account? When I was young, I thought I can go around and spend my money however I wanted. Ultimately it’s my money, isn’t it? Well, do you know that there are already laws and regulations to check bank transfers above the sum of 10.000€ in Germany? If you are not in Germany, then are you aware of the regulations in your country? For sure? Maybe they have just been adjusted. Someone is ruling over your money. Someone is ruling you!

That should be helpful for the Bitcoin-sceptic people out there. I meet a lot of them. And if you meet someone who is having a burning desire for Euro, why not encounter them with the simple facts that I mentioned before? I am personally looking forward to the day that someone can counter these facts and convince me of the Euro!